"Down here, people understand this. But we could get paint thrown on us in New York," said New Orleans costumer, jewelry maker and flea market maven Cree McCree, discussing the very real possibility of a PETA uprising against her year-old campaign to promote the use of nutria fur in fashion.

A jacket with a nutria fur collar by designer Billy Reid for his fall/winter 2010 collection. Reid uses nutria pelts from Louisiana, where the invasive species is destroying delicate marshland.Photo courtesy of Billy Reid

The fur -- luxuriously soft and once prized for coats, collars and cuffs -- definitely presents a challenge to the conventional animal rights argument.

A destructive invasive species at the crux of Louisiana's wetlands loss, nutria are being killed -- 445,963 in the past year alone -- through a state program designed to stop their voracious munching from destroying delicate coastal marshland. Because there's little market for the meat or the fur, most of the carcasses are just destroyed.

"It's a waste," McCree has said. "I think we need to honor the animal by using the animal, not just killing it."

McCree founded the nonprofit Righteous Fur last year, holding two events to promote use of the luxe byproducts of the state's Coastwide Nutria Control Program. Now she's bringing that show on the road.

The third Righteous Fur Nutria-palooza! will be held here Friday at 8:30 p.m. at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. Then, on Nov. 21, McCree will take the event to Brooklyn, N.Y.

The shows will feature nutria incorporated into a variety of clothing and costumes made by 18 designers, ranging from "cocktail wraps to northern Renaissance pieces inspired by 16th century Flemish painters to surreal flights of fancy that recall the late Alexander McQueen," McCree said.

The fur is supple and velvety. It ranges in color from dark cocoa to tawny brown, though it's often dyed. Garments are typically made with the plush under fur, after shearing or plucking the courser guard hairs from the pelt.

Native to South America, nutria -- or myocastor coypus -- were initially brought to southern Louisiana in the 1930s for fur farming. Once in the wild here, the populations quickly grew out of control, accelerating with the decline in fur demands in the 1970s. The semi-aquatic herbivores have been blamed for damaging thousands of acres of marsh.

Though the demand for the fur has been down for years, nutria does occasionally show up on high-profile fashion runways. This season, Oscar de la Renta crafted a jaunty black nutria beret. Gilles Mendel of fashion house J. Mendel used it in coats, and designer Billy Reid fashioned a detachable fur collar for a jacket, a men's fur and leather aviator cap and a very Betty Draper fur stole.

MATTHEW HINTON / THE TIMES-PICAYUNE Sarah Mack, a wetlands scientist, modeled a nutria-fur shawl that doubled as a hood during the first Righteous Fur fashion show, held Jan. 8, 2010. The piece was designed by Jennifer Anderson-Floyd, who sheared the fur in a checkerboard pattern.

"It hit me while duck hunting," said Reid, the Amite-born, Alabama-based designer who was named best new menswear designer in America by GQ magazine this year (read more about his Southern-steeped clothing in next week's Living section).

"I call it -- pardon the language -- bad-ass fur," Reid said last week from his home in Florence, Ala. "If there's such a thing as manly fur, nutria is it. I was duck hunting in Mississippi when it occurred to me. I know what it's doing to the wetlands, we should do something with this."

"It's great to work with. We've put it in a few pieces, and it's been terrific," he added.

Such validation of the swamp rat by a rising-star in the fashion design world hasn't gone unnoticed. Vanity Fair's VF Daily blog, The Guardian of London and other newspapers and magazines have written about the idea of such "responsible fur."

"Responsible fur? It seems like an oxymoron at best, a (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals)-baiting joke at worst," wrote Darrell Hartman in the VF Daily post, that came with the cheeky headline "On the RatWalk."